TV WEEKEND

TV WEEKEND; Carnies, Dust Bowl, Apocalypse

By ALESSANDRA STANLEY

Published: September 12, 2003

HBO does not do drama lightly. ''Six Feet Under'' is bubbly compared to ''The Wire,'' a dense crime series that requires almost as much time and concentration as Thomas Pynchon. In December viewers will have to brace themselves for ''Angels in America,'' a six-hour HBO movie based on the epic plays of Tony Kushner, starring Meryl Streep and directed by Mike Nichols.

And the fall season kicks off with nothing less than ''Carnivàle,'' a 12-part series that weaves an eschatological struggle between good and evil around carnival freaks and revivalists during the Depression.

But ''Carnivàle'' is more watchable than it sounds, and not solely because of the way it looks, though the cinematography provides some of the most richly imagined glimpses of rural poverty in the 1930's to be found on a television show.

''Carnivàle'' is not a would-be Ingmar Bergman film, or a homage to Fellini, despite its creators' more artsy cinematic touches. It isn't even a Dust Bowl version of ''Twin Peaks,'' though some of the more bizarre imagery and characters echo that television series by David Lynch.

A spooky supernatural adventure that tightly entwines magic and the mundane, ''Carnivàle'' is actually closer to a Harry Potter story for adults (albeit morose adults; the humor is dry and stinting).

The story was conceived by the Los Angeles screenwriter Daniel Knauf and begins with an 18-year-old, Ben Hawkins (Nick Stahl), watching his mother die in a bare, dust-choked farmhouse in Oklahoma in 1934. Ben's tale is told in parallel to that of Brother Justin Crowe, a starchy Protestant preacher in a small California town that is under siege by swarms of desperate migrant workers. Each man discovers he has a strange, supernatural talent, but their stories unfold in zig-zagging starts, moving back and forth in time and space, dropping oblique clues along the way.

Even before the first plot point drops, however, viewers are warned to brace themselves for myth and allegory. ''To each generation was born a creature of light and a creature of darkness,'' Samson, a dwarf played by Michael J. Anderson, who had a small part in Twin Peaks, says in an introduction. ''And great armies clash by night in the ancient war between good and evil.''

Homeless and broke after burying his mother, Ben is picked up by a passing caravan of jaded carnival workers managed by Samson, who in turn reports to a shadowy boss known only as Management.

The carnival crew includes soothsayers, mind readers, a bearded lady and singing Siamese twins, and they view themselves as show-business folk. (The artists added the accent over the second A and the extra E to carnival to lend their tawdry show a Continental air.) Ben views them with alarmed disgust as carnies, and they detect something unsettling about him. (When pressed, Ben says he is just a farmer, but the sawed-off chain on his leg suggests he is too modest.)

It turns out he has a healer's gift and can bring the dead back to life. (His mother refuses the offer, thinking he is ''marked'' by the devil.) His talent is revealed about the same time Crowe discovers that he, too, has miraculous powers, though his seem mostly to involve hastening people to the grave.

Mr. Knauf seems in the thrall of the apocalyptic, though sometimes the language can seem less like Scripture and more like an old ''Star Trek'' script. ''There was magic then, nobility and unimaginable cruelty,'' Samson intones. ''So it was, until the day that a false Sun exploded over Trinity. And Man forever traded away wonder for reason.''

The story is actually very basic. No adventure can proceed without a romance and a quest. Ben rescues Sofie, the daughter of a creepy catatonic fortuneteller, from an an attack, setting off a love-hate relationship that could be dragged out for many episodes. And propelled by weird dreams and scraps of memory (soldiers in the trenches of World War I, a tattooed man running through a jungle, a legless boy, etc.), Ben searches for the father he apparently never knew.

Ben is a taciturn hero, and Mr. Stahl does a remarkable job of wordlessly conveying his character's moods and yearnings, as well as his ungainly grace. Prim, righteous Brother Justin is more of a caricature, but Clancy Brown finds ways to bring some subtle glints of personality to the role.

The first three episodes are beguiling enough to suggest that beneath the show's mystique there is a mystery worth puzzling. But there is also the mystery of how long viewers' curiosity can stay piqued. One of the lessons of ''Twin Peaks'' is that after a number of episodes eerily hinting that things are not what they seem, writers are under some obligation to begin answering the question, ''Well, then what are they?''